On a plant collecting trip in the 1980s, Joy Logee acquired an unusual plant with pancake-shaped leaves that she brought back to Logee’s Greenhouses in Danielson, Connecticut. It took years to identify the untagged specimen as Pilea peperomioides, a funky tropical variety commonly known as the Chinese money plant.

It eventually faded out of Logee’s collection — until recently, when Pilea suddenly surged back into popularity, taking every plant nerd’s social media feed by storm. Pictures began popping up on Pinterest and Instagram, as design icons abroad shared updates about their precious Pilea — fueling a frenzied demand that outpaced grower supply in the United States.

Pilea gained its reputation as “The Sharing Plant,” because you had to know someone to snag a hard-to-find start. People sold Pilea pups on eBay and Etsy for shocking prices, and desperate collectors ponied up hundreds without hesitation.

Meanwhile, plant retailers like The Sill struggled to find sufficient inventory as a new generation of consumers fell in love with tropical houseplants. Although The Sill’s founder and CEO, Eliza Blank, communicates with growers regularly to anticipate demand, she says she consistently sells out of varieties like Monstera deliciosa because growers can’t keep up with trends.

“Growers don’t have a huge appetite for risk, which makes our job more difficult, because we have to wait until enough retailers ask for the same plant,” Blank says. “It’s ultimately worse for the grower, too, because as soon as growers finally caught onto the popularity of Pilea, then they weren’t making as much money as they could have if they would have been willing to be the first to grow it.”

Growers are understandably loath to take greenhouse space away from reliable crops to grow every “wacky new plant,” that Blank and other retailers request. As a result, the whole industry is feeling the pressure of a surging houseplant market, driven by trends that are redefining consumers’ relationships with plants.

Retro revival

Like Pilea, other houseplants from past decades are making a strong comeback.

When Austin Bryant browses Pinterest today, he sees houseplants that were hip in the ’70s; the same types of interior tropical foliage that his parents started growing when they opened Heart of Florida Greenhouses in 1977.

“It’s a minimalist retro look,” says Bryant, head of sales at his family’s greenhouse in Zolfo Springs, Florida, “like Ficus lyrata (fiddle-leaf fig) and Monstera deliciosa (split-leaf philodendron). Those are both oldie goldies, and those are the two hottest plants you could have right now. Is this generation searching to find a connection with their grandparents? I don’t know, but I can look on Pinterest and see plants I haven’t seen in years.”

Ty Strode, vice president and director of marketing at Agri-Starts in Apopka, Florida, agrees that throwback plants are back in vogue. He says tropical foliage is an obvious choice for a new generation of plant owners, because of its low-light, easy care requirements and exotic-looking leaves.

“We’re seeing more opportunity in these funky retro plants like Pilea and Monstera, but the core crops — like Spathiphyllum (peace lily), Syngonium (arrowhead vine), Dieffenbachia (dumb cane) and Aglaonema (Chinese evergreens) — continue to be in demand, too,” Strode says. “The mainstays will always be there, but now there’s a new opportunity to reinvent these re-emerging plants.”

So, what’s different about indoor foliage this time around?

The speed of social media

The classics are still in style, but the way consumers are choosing and using houseplants has changed drastically. The biggest difference with this generation, and their most influential trendsetter, is social media.

“It wasn’t until interior designers and lifestyle influencers gained traction on visual media channels like Instagram and Pinterest that plants became as popular as they are,” says Blank, who founded The Sill as an online plant retailer in 2012 and later opened two stores in New York City. The Sill also opened a Los Angeles store in February. “It used to be that the fiddle-leaf fig tree was only known to the audience reading Architectural Digest magazines, but now that Instagram exists, it democratizes access to high design.”

Now, photos of highly styled interiors accented with plants are making consumers green with “apartment envy,” says Mason Day, co-founder of GrowIt, a mobile app where people can share plant pictures and growing tips. As a result, young consumers see houseplants as must-have décor that makes a bold fashion statement. This nature-infused design aesthetic is pushing houseplant popularity to new heights.

“Houseplants are becoming more prevalent in all kinds of advertisements,” says Strode, who’s noticed clothing retailers adding plants to their merchandising displays for an earthy vibe. “That organic look is popular, so people are paying more attention to incorporating plants into their lives.”

The challenge is that modern plant preferences can shift at the speed of social media, and consumers might not appreciate how long it takes growers to produce those pretty plants they see online.

“It’s difficult for growers to keep up with these trends because we’re growing plants that are slow to produce, and this generation is flip-flopping faster than we can get liners in the soil,” Bryant says. “We put in orders six months prior to receiving anthurium plugs, for example, and then it takes 10 to 12 months to finish a one-gallon pot. That trend could change before the plant we ordered becomes a finished product.”

Agri-Starts’ Randy Strode (president) and Ty Strode (vice president and director of marketing

PHOTO COURTESY OF AGRI-STAR

Greening up the indoors

This generation’s obsession with social media propels the houseplant market in other ways.

“It’s no secret that we’re the indoor generation, and we stare at our screens all day,” says Katie Dubow, creative director at Garden Media Group — whose 2019 Garden Media Trend Report stated that 90 percent of people spend nearly 22 hours inside every day. Americans spend 93 percent of their time inside, according to the report, while children average less than an hour outside per day — 50 percent less than their parents did as kids.

“Whether we’re doing it consciously or subconsciously,” Dubow says, “we’re putting more greenery in our homes because we’re spending more time inside.”

Last year, 30 percent of all households bought at least one houseplant, according to research from the National Gardening Association. Millennials were responsible for 31 percent of recent houseplant sales.

While design aesthetics definitely play a role, Dubow thinks our houseplant fascination stems from a deeper underlying focus on wellness and self-care.

“People understand that our surroundings where we work, live and play can affect our health and well-being,” Dubow says. “That’s one of the biggest trends causing people to turn toward houseplants, because they want to incorporate more wellness in their space.”

Research about the health benefits of plants has been around for decades — popularized by the NASA Clean Air Study published in 1989, which concluded that common indoor plants like Dracaena, Sansevieria and Spathiphyllum could remove trace toxins from the air. More recently, “Project Carbon” research from the University of Georgia, paid for by the National Foliage Foundation (now the National Horticulture Foundation, NHF) with support from Green Plants for Green Buildings and the Florida Nursery, Growers & Landscape Association, confirmed that interior plants remove carbon from the air.

Earlier this year, the National Initiative for Consumer Horticulture (NICH) developed a series of infographics to promote the proven health and wellness benefits of houseplants. The #PlantsDoThat campaign illustrated how indoor plants can improve test scores in classrooms, lower blood pressure in hospitals and increase productivity in the workplace.

“We started the #PlantsDoThat campaign to show people what houseplants actually do in their everyday lives,” says Day, who is also the chair of the commercial council for NICH. “These benefits resonate with Millennials, because they want something that does more than just look pretty.”

According to global research firm Mintel, 52 percent of U.S. consumers buy houseplants because of their air-purifying power. Costa Farms has been highlighting the health benefits of plants since 2008, when Garden Media Group helped the nursery launch its O2 for You marketing campaign, with blog content and social media posts featuring how plants can improve air quality and boost concentration.

Bryant still sees plenty of opportunity for the green industry to leverage this type of messaging. “These benefits are brandable tools that nurseries should be using to drive the popularity of these plants,” he says. “All growers have access to this information through the NHF or NICH; it’s essentially free data to help tell the story of why we should have more plants around us.”

Supporting new plant parents

When consumers buy houseplants they spotted on social media, they expect it to look just like it did online. “Everyone knows what happens if you compare yourself to what you see on Pinterest,” Bryant says. “You’ll be disappointed, because there’s such a disconnect between the internet and reality.”

The culprit is the lack of education about plant care requirements. Young consumers may not be able to detect which plant photos have been staged for social media, versus what’s realistic in their apartment — so they need support to be successful.

“There’s been a definite spike in interest for houseplants, but that doesn’t necessarily correlate to a spike in knowledge about them,” Day says. “A lot of the questions that users post on GrowIt are focused on, ‘What’s wrong with my plant?’ or ‘How do I take care of it?’ There’s an overwhelming amount of basic information that people are looking for. That’s why we can’t just look at people as customers, but students as well.”

The biggest difference today is the new digital channels where consumers can find information. That’s why apps like GrowIt and SmartPlant exist to answer basic questions — and it’s why growers and retailers need to be looking online, too.

“[Millennials are] looking at online sources and apps for their care needs,” says Jacob Butler, director of sales for SmartPlant, an app that provides customized plant care notifications. “You’ll see more growers and retailers producing their own content to answer questions that people are searching for. Because if houseplants aren’t represented on your website, [Millennials] are going to move on to someone else.”

To connect with this tech-savvy audience, Dubow suggests using plant tags as an opportunity to engage online by including a link to your website for more information. “Drive them to your website, where you can capture their email address,” she says.

The Sill

COURTESY OF THE SIL

Eliza Blank, CEO

COURTESY OF THE SILL

Monstera deliciosa

COURTESY OF MASON DAY

GrowIt community associate Kourtnie Nunley with some of her favorite plants

COURTESY OF MASON DAY

Engaging customers in ongoing education is key to building relationships that last longer than plant fads. “The best way to get a return customer is to make them feel like they have a green thumb,” Bryant says. “Everyone wants to feel successful, so it’s our responsibility as growers to put out good care information.”

The challenge, he says, is that small independent nurseries that supply IGCs don’t often have the bandwidth to market directly to consumers. So, growers and retailers have to work together.

“It starts with the grower, because you’re the expert, and retailers can’t be experts in everything they sell,” Dubow says.

Blank says retailers should take a more active role. For example, The Sill offers regular workshops and online classes, in addition to a plant helpline that customers can text with questions.

“There’s only so much that [growers] can put on a plant tag,” Blank says. “It’s really the salespeople who should be educating consumers.”

Educating a new generation of houseplant parents requires collaboration and communication.

If customers ask why a certain houseplant is so expensive, for example, retailers need to understand the slow-growing process involved in production before the plant landed on the shelf.

Tapping into growth

There’s no doubt that houseplants are back, and the growth outlook for this market is hot.

“Exploding is the only word to describe it,” Day says.

“The industry is poised for growth,” Dubow says. “I don’t see it slowing down at all.”

Growers can respond to these opportunities one of two ways: “You’ve got growers that have always grown what they grow and that’s all they’re going to grow,” Bryant says. “And then you have businesses that are willing to look outside the box.”

“What can nurseries do today to prepare for tomorrow?” Bryant says. “Well, if you’re stuck in the rut of only growing five things, try to break out of the mold and expand. You can’t look at all the shiny things flying by, but you can make small changes. Look for plant material that has similar watering and light requirements, and try it.”

In this market, diversity is key. Heart of Florida grows about 30 to 40 varieties in several pot sizes, which each require different watering schedules. “It’s a grower’s nightmare,” Bryant says. “It’s like a zoo with 40 animals, and every one of them has a different diet. We could do things a lot cheaper and easier if we only specialized in five plants, but this generation wants variety. Everyone wants something different, so it’s easier to create consistent orders when you have a wider variety of material.”

Even growers that specialize in orchids or bromeliads are driven by diversity, Bryant says, because retailers are more likely to order one case of 20 assorted colors than 20 cases of the exact same variety.

“There’s more openness and acceptance for trialing different things than I’ve seen before,” Strode says. “People are more willing to say, ‘Sure, send me a few hundred of those to try.’ The collection mentality is coming back.”

That’s good news, if you were late to the Pilea fad, which Bryant calls “the Tickle-Me-Elmo of last year.” If you look beyond specific varieties, these short-lived fads can signal future houseplant trends. For example, Day predicts that 2019 will be the year of Peperomia, as Pilea lovers look to add different varieties to their collection. Strode also sees growth potential in other “bizarre aroids” that will follow the popularity of Monstera, but with different variegation, coloration and texture. The best way to stay on top of these houseplant trends is by staying in touch with your customers — whether that means following consumer fads on Instagram or communicating openly with retailers.

“If you keep your ears open, your customers will ask you for the plants they want,” Bryant says. “They’ll lead you in the right direction, because your customers are only going to want things that are selling, and if it’s selling, that’s something you want to be growing.”

The economic impact of climate change

Departments - Last Look | Bonus takeaways to keep you thinking

In the Fourth National Climate Assessment, which assesses the science of climate change and variability and its impacts across the United States, researchers warn that the costs of global warming are continuing to rise. If greenhouse gas emissions continue at a high Representation Concentration Pathway (RCP) of 8.5, the damage caused by these greenhouse gases are expected to cost the U.S. billions of dollars each year by 2090. To curb this impact, the U.S. will need to address the high RCP by midcentury and keep emission under 4.5 RCP. Here are the sectors that will suffer the biggest economic impact annually with greenhouse gas emissions of RCP 8.5, and the percent of damages avoided if they get under RCP 4.5.

Balanced landscapes have a mix of foliage colors, textures and evergreens so that the garden still looks beautiful even when plants are not flowering or dormant.

JAMIE HOOPER, ADOBE STOCK

At your store, you’ve likely assisted customers who want to improve their gardens but don’t have any idea about how to start. They know when their yard needs work or appears less than exciting, but they can’t articulate why they are unhappy.

You’ve also assisted customers who have a new landscape and don’t know where to begin with the plantings. Some are faced with new plantings because something has changed on their property. In each of these cases, you’ve helped homeowners who need help with basic design principles.

Although we aren’t going to turn all employees and customers into garden designers, there are general guidelines for success that everyone can follow. These strategies can be helpful to have on hand, for shoppers and staff alike.

1. Size matters, and it will grow

A landscape won’t look its best if the shrubs and trees need to be constantly cut back in an ever-futile effort to keep them small. Similarly, if some plants grow so large that they smother others or block windows or walkways, this can tend to look unkempt or poorly designed.

Find out how large the plants chosen will grow and space them accordingly. Assume that most shrubs and trees grow larger than what’s listed on labels. If the newly planted landscape looks bare because the plants are appropriately spaced, use perennials, annuals or objects such as birdbaths to fill spaces while the larger plants grow. Perennials and garden ornaments can be moved as shrubs grow larger.

2. Match plants to the amount of sunlight

Using the right plant in the right place is one of the first rules of good garden design. Beautiful landscapes contain plants that are thriving, so choose varieties known to prosper in your location.

3. Use a variety of foliage colors and textures

Most people tend to focus on flowers, but a good garden designer looks at foliage first. Many plantings look boring because most of the plants have tiny green leaves. Aim to have a variety of leaf sizes, colors and textures in your garden. For example: place a plant with large green leaves next to one with bluish needles, followed by a shrub with purple or red foliage.

4. Plant a mix of evergreens and deciduous plants

If gardens have a mix of plants that keep their foliage 12 months a year and those that lose leaves in the winter, there will be something of interest through all the seasons.

Evergreens and structures such as stonewalls or fences are often called “the bones” of a garden. In colder climates, think of these plants and structures as the places where snow will fall. Landscapes with “good bones” are beautiful even when plants lose their leaves or are dormant.

5. Don’t go overboard with novelty

Even if you love topiary, weeping varieties or variegated plants, for example, when these are used to excess, they lose their impact.

6. Aim for a range of flowering times

Choose plants that flower at different times throughout the year so that something special is happening in all seasons.

7. For shrubs, plant some groups and some singles

If a garden is planted with one of these and one of those, it tends to look like a lineup of “the usual suspects.” Good designs have some large groups of a single variety, and other stand-alone specimen plants.

Beware of novelty or high-maintenance plants. Customers prefer plants that are easy to care for.

FOX17, ADOBE STOCK

8. For perennials and annuals, larger groups are better

Unless you’re planting in a field or meadow style, most flower gardens look best when plants are placed in larger groups. Straight lines of plants are best for formal style gardens, while groups or “puddles” of plants look good in informal plantings.

C.L. Fornari is a speaker, writer and radio/podcast host who has worked at Hyannis Country Garden, an IGC on Cape Cod, for more than 20 years. She has her audiences convinced that C.L. stands for “Compost Lover.” Learn more at www.GardenLady.com

Departments - Straight Talk | Honest insights from an IGC expert

Composting is still a mystery to many homeowners. They need step-by-step instructions and easy-to-use compost bins to get them actively composting. .

PIXAVRIL, ADOBE STOCK

Weather is rarely a mild event here in Texas. More like a wide-swinging pendulum that hits extremes on either end of its journey. That said, there’s no denying the extremes are getting more extreme. Hot is getting hotter, cold is getting colder, and it doesn’t seem to just rain anymore — it floods. Storms don’t just blow through anymore — they rage.

No matter where you live, you’re no doubt seeing significant weather changes and extremes due to climate change.

What does this mean for gardeners and your green industry business? Mandatory adaptation. We’re all going to need to be more Earth-conscious in our gardening and business practices if we have any hope of keeping what we have now. But it’s easy to get overwhelmed and discouraged when you don’t know where to start.

Consider creating quick tips for your customers that outline specific Earth-friendly practices and products that are simple to understand and execute. Here are a few of my top tips to get you started:

1. Start with soil

Improving soil health and reducing erosion (stabilizing soil) should be a top priority for gardeners and green industry pros alike. Rebuilding soil microfauna and flora by adding organic matter and encouraging good aeration is a good place to start. Healthy aerated soil can better sustain healthy stands of trees, shrubs, and lawns to reduce erosion and mitigate water runoff (a huge source of water waste in urban environments). Discourage bare soil in urban environments. Plant something!

Using cover crops in veggie beds and landscape beds is another great way to protect and build soil health. Most cover crops are very easy to grow — you just need to have the right seed at the right time — and know when to turn plants under into the soil as agreen manure.

Teach customers that in order to feed your plants, you need to feed the soil first.

2. Cut the gas

I hate leaf blowers with a passion. They are horrible noise and air polluters. As an industry insider who has run plenty of maintenance activities directly, blowers are often a crutch for landscape maintenance employees looking to fill time. They are used too often and for too long, for tasks that should instead require a little bit of elbow grease. Add gas mowers and weed-eaters, and you have a recipe for out of control air (and noise) pollution. Homeowners just copy what they see us doing.

Sure, power tools have their place. But leaf blowers used in landscape beds do terrible damage to plants and the soil. They can severely compact soil and expose plant roots. Use them on hardscape surfaces but reduce or restrict their use in areas with soil.

While you won’t eliminate your carbon footprint by switching to electric blowers and mowers, you can significantly reduce air pollution and noise pollution. I’ve been testing and using electric and battery-operated tools for years, and I can say that the ones on the market now will get the job done – much more quietly – for your retail customers. Eco-friendly power garden tools (and good old manual tools) are still a niche category, but one that is prime for the IGC target customer.

It’s not just power tools that use fossil fuels and generate emissions, so do many synthetic fertilizers and pest control products. Work to provide fossil fuel-free alternatives for customers looking to convert to more Earth- and soil-friendly options.

3. Plant more trees and shrubs

Large, long-lived plants, such as trees and large shrubs, absorb more CO2 from the atmosphere than smaller plants, such as annuals and perennials. Trees provide a multitude of benefits in urban environments, such as shade to mitigate urban temperatures and AC use and emissions for cooling your home. Plus, they provide much needed habitat for local wildlife.

Large tree and shrub sales have declined for many garden centers, but if you focus on educating your customers on the benefits of urban trees and native or regionally adapted plants, you can recapture some of their interest and sales. Just like with synthetic products, consider offering specific trade out suggestions for many of the over-planted invasives out there. A “Plant This Not That program.” As customers get more knowledgeable about natives and invasives, they’ll look to you for specific sustainable plant choices.

4. No waste

The no-waste movement is picking up serious momentum. Consumers are looking for ways to drastically reduce their use of plastic and other non-reusable containers and packaging. If you don’t already teach composting to your customers, now’s the time to start. Recycling food and yard waste is an excellent way to reduce methane emissions from landfills.

Simply composting the same waste in your home garden significantly reduces methane emissions and you get your own nutrient-rich compost to put back into your landscape.

Composting is still a mystery to many homeowners. They need step-by-step instructions and easy-to-use compost bins (or bin-building classes) to get them actively composting.

5. Leverage the lawn

Americans still have a death grip on their lawns. That being the case, we need to educate our customers on how to go green with their lawns to get the most out of the benefits lawns can offer. Lawns do, of course, absorb carbon from the atmosphere, reduce soil erosion and runoff, and mitigate temperatures in urban environments. These are all good reasons why a lawn is preferable to gravel in city landscapes. Unfortunately, it’s how we maintain our lawns that negates these positive effects.

Let’s teach them how to water correctly (they all over-water), mow high and less often, fertilize naturally by feeding the soil, and choose tougher lawngrass species. Throw in Earth-friendly lawn care tools, and you’ve made some progress. If you can show them how to trade out the lawn for drought-tolerant groundcovers or native perennials, all the better.

These might all seem like very simple and obvious actions to those of us in the industry. But to the general population — your customers — a simple starting place can make a world of difference.

Leslie (CPH) owns Halleck Horticultural, LLC, through which she provides horticultural consulting, business and marketing strategy, product development and branding, and content creation for green industry companies. lesliehalleck.com

The one class that changed Haley Peterson’s life was a last-minute addition to her schedule. Had she chosen differently, it’s largely possible she would be studying to become a teacher, not a landscape designer. When she was a senior at Pekin Community High School in Illinois, Peterson figured “What the heck?” and squeezed a hands-on landscaping class into her schedule. She had no idea it would spark an interest that grew strong enough for her to change from education into her current major of horticulture landscape management at Illinois Community College (ICC).

Now approaching her final semester at the two-year school located less than a half hour from her home, Peterson is thankful for that high school class. She fell in love with the project she and a classmate spearheaded, which was a plan to beautify a dirt patch on school property. The class assignment involved budgeting, drawing plans and executing their landscape design. They created a 3-D model and a computer-assisted drawing sketch, then pitched the idea for eventual approval to the school board. Once that was completed, Peterson and her partner even implemented the designs on the school campus, where it still stands today.

The project was Peterson’s first experience working in landscaping, let alone planning and completing an entire project.

“It meant a lot because I was shocked [my teacher] put so much trust in me and my classmate, who was my partner in it,” Peterson says. “He kind of let us run the show. We just approved everything through him. He guided us through and made us do all the work, so it just got my foot in the door.”

Even today, Peterson prefers hands-on experiences outside a classroom, which includes her maintenance job with the greenhouse on campus and various laboratories, and trips and seminars the horticulture club attends. Though she completed her final season this fall, Peterson even balanced her classwork and related activities with a spot on the ICC volleyball team. This proved to be difficult when she’d be away for tournaments on most weekends, plus the practices and weekday games cut into how much time she had to work on post-class activities.

Major: Horticulture Landscape Management

School: Illinois Community College

Still, Peterson says she’s glad she learned to handle a stressful, busy schedule because it will help her after graduation. “Some days were long days, but I got through it and there’s nothing I regret,” Peterson says. “It was the greatest time of my life.”

Peterson says she intends to take at least a year off school to work professionally, or she’ll transfer from ICC to a larger school to obtain a bachelor’s degree. She’s interested in Southern Illinois University, roughly four hours south of ICC.

For students who are interested in horticulture, Peterson recommends they extensively research the career path and consider all the different possibilities. ICC alone offers two variations of a horticulture degree, including Peterson’s choice that focuses on landscape management. The other is turfgrass management, which deals more with the lawn and golf industries.

Options are out there, Peterson says, but it was only a few years ago that she didn’t know they existed in horticulture.

“You should have a general idea of what this field’s about and what you’ll be asked to do,” Peterson says. “If they’re not up for that calling, then maybe they can do a different field within (horticulture), but there’s specifics they’ve got to figure out. You’ve just got to figure out what you like.”